For those of you who read my report on the X-Men and the New Mutants, you have a rough idea of when I started reading comic books. Fortunately, I was also a collector, right from the start, and I only had one week moment in twenty-five years where I sold off a part of my collection to pay some bills. This means I own some great comics and I miss some even better ones.

With this in mind the Essentials Series from Marvel Comics has been filling in blanks and getting me back in touch with some of the best comic books of all time. When the year is 1985, the Punisher Limited Series immediately jumps to mind, with the first issue standing out in all its gritty and graphic beauty. Mike Zeck's pencils look scarier without color, and his Punisher is as wide as a bus and hits twice as hard. When I was a kid, this was the Punisher I wanted to become. (Yeah, and to think I don't even own a gun...)

The Punisher #1 was a double sized issue, beginning with Frank Castle being placed into the confines of Ryker's Prison. "Inside? A storm of whispers chills the inmates to the bone," is the second caption. As Frank walks past the cells of his new roommates most of them tremble with fear, perfect foreshadowing for the action to come.

Characterization picks up the pace when the author, Steven Grant, utilizes a nicely doubled slide show of Frank in action as the Punisher and in Vietnam. We learn that his recent bout with madness was "drug induced", (to explain away a nasty habit of shooting at jaywalkers), and "he tests so sane it's scary."

Immediately we see the juxtaposition of Frank, who is guilty of hunting down those are guilty, and the guilty, who now surround him, invading his space, and generally taking up too much of his oxygen for him to be happy. His first foe is his roommate, a loud massive braggart who starts making demands, including ten dollars a week and his desserts. Frank drops the fat bastard like he's dropping trash in the garbage, and tells him in no uncertain terms, "You're my dog, see? You bark when I say bark, you fetch when I say fetch...and you give me information, got it?" Once more fast action propels the story swiftly along, and we have a source of insider information that Frank can rely on. We see Frank as a cross between the Arkham poetry of Batman, inside the realism of an authentic prison story. Frank can't just waltz in and out of his prison, but still the inmates are locked up with him, not the other way around.

Soon we reach a fine image of Veteran Pride as Frank wades through nine tough guys, all guilty of trying to stop him from approaching Jigsaw. Fighting the Punisher is a mistake none of them will make again, that is if they survive being in traction in the prison hospital. He only drops six and then three show their bellys (as I would, make no mistake - you see someone fight like that your knees literally shake,) and Frank is allowed to walk through Cell Block D straight to Jigsaw's lair. This time Jigsaw commands his men to fight and for a moment it looks like two of them have him by the arms. Jigsaw approaches, breaking a bottle so he can ravage Frank's face with the sharp shards, but Frank slams his jailers back against the bars, grabs Jigsaw's hand holding the bottle, and squeezes until the bottle pops, destroying Jigsaw's hand to match his face.

To resolve the problem without a riot, writer Grant introduces a totally new character, Don Carvello, who is an even bigger fish than Jigsaw. Carvello welcomes Frank and calls a truce until they are free and out of prison. Frank's thoughts are dark and brutal. He plans escape, he plots the death of his enemies, and he prepares mentally and physically for the night of the planned jailbreak. When Don Carvello's enforcer shoots Frank with a low caliber slug through a homemade silencer, Frank plays dead, but is on the run when the cells go open, having caught the slug with a reinforced mattress. The ensuing carnage is where Frank becomes the Punisher, taking out his would be assassin, tricking Jigsaw, and basically giving the inmates a hard time. By the time you are finished with this issue, you have a clearer idea of who the Punisher is, why he is who he is, and exactly what he is capable of in his one man fight against crime.

The notion that the Punisher is a poor man's Batman is chronologically incorrect. Frank Miller started writing gritty stories with the Punisher in them that preceded his work on the Dark Night Returns. The Punisher fed the evolution of that Batman from normal good guy to edgy unknown quantity, and this series came out in the same year as Miller's opus. It also co-existed on the stands with the Watchmen, a story that contains an infamous jailing of a vigilante and a subsequent escape. It is difficult to know whether these archetypes are floating through the great minds like some ethereal collective consciousness, or if it's all just coincidence, (never plagiarism!), but the Punisher mini series is a necessary piece of the equation to figuring out this era of comic production.

Reprinted in splenderous black and white in Punisher Essential's #1, I highly, highly, recomend investing in the massive collection for many reasons, but Punisher Limited Series #1 comes first and foremost to my mind. Some say this might be too ultraviolent for kids to see, but I was eleven when this book came out and I have never even fired a gun, so this argument doesn't get far with me. Steven Grant does a great job, check it out!